New in February: Melissa Febos, Bill Hayes, Jenny Johnson, and John Rechy

Author: Edit Team
February 8, 2017
New month, new books! .
This month, Bloomsbury is releasing Abandon Me, a new memior from bestselling writer Melissa Febos.
From the publisher:
In her dazzling Abandon Me, Febos captures the intense bonds of love and the need for connection — with family, lovers, and oneself. First, her birth father, who left her with only an inheritance of addiction and Native American blood, its meaning a mystery. As Febos tentatively reconnects, she sees how both these lineages manifest in her own life, marked by compulsion and an instinct for self-erasure. Meanwhile, she remains closely tied to the sea captain who raised her, his parenting ardent but intermittent as his work took him away for months at a time. Woven throughout is the hypnotic story of an all-consuming, long-distance love affair with a woman, marked equally by worship and withdrawal. In visceral, erotic prose, Febos captures their mutual abandonment to passion and obsession — and the terror and exhilaration of losing herself in another.
At once a fearlessly vulnerable memoir and an incisive investigation of art, love, and identity, Abandon Me draws on childhood stories, religion, psychology, mythology, popular culture, and the intimacies of one writer’s life to reveal intellectual and emotional truths that feel startlingly universal.
Poetry lovers rejoice! This month sees the release of Jenny Johnson’s much anticipated collection In Full Velvet (Sarabande Books):
Sinuous and sensual, the poems of In Full Velvet interrogate the nuances of desire, love, gender, ecology, LGBTQ lineage and community, and the tension between a body’s material limits and the forms made possible by the imagination. Characterized by formal poise, vulnerability, and compassion, Johnson’s debut collection is one of resounding generosity and grace.
The new memoir Insomniac City (Bloomsbury), by writer Bill Hayes, is both a testament to the vibrancy of New York City and a candid exploration of love and loss:
Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city’s incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.
And he unexpectedly fell in love again, with his friend and neighbor, the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose exuberance–“I don’t so much fear death as I do wasting life,” he tells Hayes early on–is captured in funny and touching vignettes throughout. What emerges is a portrait of Sacks at his most personal and endearing, from falling in love for the first time at age seventy-five to facing illness and death (Sacks died of cancer in August 2015). Insomniac City is both a meditation on grief and a celebration of life. Filled with Hayes’s distinctive street photos of everyday New Yorkers, the book is a love song to the city and to all who have felt the particular magic and solace it offers.
Acclaimed author John Rechy’s After the Blue Hour (Grove) is a dynamic novel of psycho-sexual gamesmanship set on a luxurious private island in the summer of 1960.
From the publisher:
John Rechy’s first novel, City of Night, an international bestseller, is considered a modern classic. Subsequent work asserts his place among America’s most important writers. The author’s most daring work, After the Blue Hour is narrated by a twenty-four-year-old writer named John Rechy. Fleeing a turbulent life in Los Angeles, he accepts an invitation to a private island from an admirer of his work. There, he joins Paul, his imposing host in his late thirties, his beautiful mistress, and his precocious teenage son. Browsing Paul’s library and conversing together on the deck about literature and film during the spell of evening’s “blue hour,” John feels surcease, until, with unabashed candor, Paul shares intimate details of his life. Through cunning seductive charm, he married and divorced an ambassador’s daughter and the heiress to a vast fortune. Avoiding identifying his son’s mother, he reveals an affinity for erotic “dangerous games.” With intimations of past decadence and menace, an abandoned island nearby arouses tense fascination over the group. As “games” veer toward violence, secrets surface in startling twists and turns. Explosive confrontation becomes inevitable.
As always, if we missed an author or book, or if you have a book coming out next month, please email us.
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Fiction
- After the Blue Hour by John Rechy, Grove Atlantic
- Beneath the Stars by Lynn Charles, Interlude Press
- No Other World by Rahul Mehta, Harper
- One Week in LA | Two Years Later by Kody Christiansen, McNally Jackson Books
- Running by Cara Hoffman, Simon & Schuster
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Nonfiction
- Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure by Eli Clare, Duke University Press Books
- Dear Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Teacher: Letters of Advice to Help You Find Your Way edited by William DeJean & Jeff Sapp, Information Age Publishing
- Good Night, Beloved Comrade: The Letters of Denton Welch to Eric Oliver edited by Daniel J. Murtaugh, University of Wisconsin Press
- Listen, We Need to Talk: How to Change Attitudes about LGBT Rights by Brian F. Harrison & Melissa R. Michelson, Oxford University Press
- Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community by John Chaich & Todd Oldham, AMMO Books
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LGBT Studies
- Cross-National Public Opinion about Homosexuality: Examining Attitudes across the Globe by Amy Adamczyk, University of California Press
- Gender Bending Detective Fiction: A Critical Analysis of Selected Works by Heather Duerre Humann, Mcfarland & Co Inc Pub
- New Intimacies, Old Desires: Law, Culture and Queer Politics in Neoliberal Times edited by Oishik Sircar & Dipika Jain, Zubaan Books
- Queer Difficulty in Art and Poetry: Rethinking the Sexed Body in Verse and Visual Culture edited by Jongwoo Jeremy Kim & Christopher Reed, Routledge
- Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed, Duke University Press
- The Ladies of Llangollen: Desire, Indeterminacy, and the Legacies of Criticism by Fiona Brideoake, Bucknell University Press
- The Perplexity of a Muslim Woman: Over Inheritance, Marriage, and Homosexuality by Olfa Youssef, Lexington Books
- TransAntiquity: Cross-Dressing and Transgender Dynamics in the Ancient World edited by Domitilla Campanile, Filippo Carlà-Uhink, & Margherita Facella, Routledge
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Young Adult
- 10 Things I Can See From Here by Carrie Mac, Knopf Books for Young Readers
- 18 Days by Cory Blystone, Kwirk Publishing
- At the Edge of the Universe by Shaun David Hutchinson, Simon Pulse
- Subject to Change by Karen Nesbitt, Orca Book Publishers
- We Are Okay by Nina LaCour, Dutton Books for Young Readers
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Romance
- Amounting to Nothing by Karis Walsh, Bold Strokes Books
- Becoming You by Michelle Grubb, Bold Strokes Books
- Consequences by Sarah Libero, Bella Books
- Crescent City Confidential by Aurora Rey, Bold Strokes Books
- Delay of Game by Tracey Richardson, Bella Books
- Milgrane: Embracing the Sapphire by Y. L. Wigman, Bella Books
- The Impasse by Franci McMahon, Bold Strokes Books
- The Right Kind of Wrong by PJ Trebelhorn, Bold Strokes Books
- Wishing on a Dream by Julie Cannon, Bold Strokes Books
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Speculative Fiction/Horror
- Birthright by Missouri Vaun, Bold Strokes Books
- Countermind by Adrian Randall, DSP
- Once by Julia Heslin, Independent
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Mystery/Thriller
- Worms of Sin by Lyle Blake Smythers, Bold Strokes Books Liberty Editions
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Bio/Memoir
- Abandon Me by Melissa Febos, Bloomsbury USA
- Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me by Bill Hayes, Bloomsbury USA
- Keith Haring: The Boy Who Kept Drawing by Kay Haring, Penguin Random House
- The Secret Life of a Black Aspie: A Memoir by Anand Prahlad, University of Alaska Press
- Transitioning Together: One Couple’s Journey of Gender and Identity Discovery by Wenn B. Lawson & Beatrice M. Lawson, Jessica Kingsley Publishers
- True Colours: My Life as the First Openly Transgender Officer in the British Armed Forces by Caroline Paige, Biteback Publishing
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Erotica
- Love Down Under by MJ Williamz, Bold Strokes HeatStroke
- Party Favors by Jaime Clevenger, Bella Books
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Poetry
- In Full Velvet by Jenny Johnson, Sarabande Books
- Novena: Poems by Jacques Rancourt, LSU Press